Almost Like Daylight
by icecreamlova
Summary: She won't, won't, won't. Except, in the end, she does... Lady Sandrilene fa Toren, and the monster within. When everyone else is gone, there's no one to catch you if you fall. Dark!Sandry


_**Edited 23/03/2011.**_

_- Written for (and winner of!) the October Challenge at the Tamora Pierce Experiment: Writing Challenges forum (challenge element: 'monster')  
- 2nd place in the Winter 2010/2011 Circle of Ficship competition_

_The link is on my profile - go check them out!_

_Warnings: implied torture, general creepiness, mentioned character death._

**

* * *

Almost Like Daylight  
**_By icecreamlova_

- : -

Once upon a time there was a little slip of a girl with magic in her fingers and love in her heart, who lived on the edges of a temple-city where tales could be true or they could be real, but they weren't always both. This girl, she loved laughter and she loved life, and she loved the light either of them could bring to the faces of her friends and family. So every day, she went out of her way to smile with everything she had, until her eyes shone as cornflower blue as a cloudless sky, and warmth filled the small cottage even when arguments broke out, or when someone's books went missing and lightning sparked out of control.

Once upon a time, there was a little slip of a girl with darkness in her past, who looked back and saw the shadow of a monster at her heels. Afraid, she walked away and laughed and smiled, but over her shoulder the shadow followed, and every time she turned to try and sear it away, it grew more substance, until chains rose to twine around her ankles and dragged her to a halt with the weight of the past. And every time she opened her mouth to cry out, the shadow moved in response, so she held her tongue and closed her eyes, and made no noise when her friends walked on ahead.

Once upon a time, the earth shook and her friends stopped, and they turned back, for without her light they were not whole. And when they saw the shadows, they refused to simply stay, but gave her of their own laughter and smiles, and she spun the magic into ropes that coiled along her wrists and dragged her away from the shadows into the safety of the sun. They berated her for holding her tongue and closing her eyes, for their minds were now one, and the memory of succumbing to the taste of bitter defeat on her tongue was not one they would readily forgive. Not her, when they remembered a lone voice in the crowd, ready to defend tree and thief, outcast girls and mistreated puppies. So they offered light to shine from her fingers and bonds to make her whole, and the four became one.

Once upon a time, there was a young woman who feared the dark but was bound to light by her friends and their smiles, until the day she paused and saw...

And saw...

_you've failed. not us. never will be us. you've failed. not coming back. left you. goodbye. stop. now_

_Briar and his chains, Daja and her grating, Tris and her ropes - down, down, down._

_All the better to hear you with._

_And now?_

Fears and night terrors, dreams-turned-to-truth, facts that have been written across the stars and twisted into an impossible future that will one day come to pass. When she stands between the two paths and turns her head, she sees endless darkness on both sides, no light, no friends, and she will be alone when she falls.

The paths are diverging, and she can't face the shadows of monsters alone again, because the laughter and smiles, fingers of magic and a heart of love aren't enough when four becomes one.

She won't, won't, won't...

Except, in the end, she does.

- : -

On her better days, Sandrilene fa Toren stops listening.

She locks all the doors, draws the curtains and dims the lights until she can see nothing except the faintest glow flickering beneath her eyelids. (Because even now, she can't stand total immersion into darkness.) Curled up into a small ball, long ribbons of amber silk smothering her face and frothing along her ankles, her fingers snag in sweat-soaked snakes of hair as she claps her nail-bitten hands to her ears and pretends not listening means that there's no one talking at all.

On her better days.

In the minutes in between, she draws away the magic in light-crystals altogether, and in the fathomless black, she half-smiles, half-grins (there has always been a difference, for her). She binds stray scraps of magic, sweeps away yesterday's leftover half-thoughts and spells, and reaches into the special corner of her mind.

"I don't want to look like a monster while we're talking," she explains to herself, to her friends.

Darkness sharpens the other senses.

_(All the better to hear you with.)_

She listens.

_How long're you gonna keep this up, Duchess?_

_Let us free, Saati._

_This is ridiculous. You have to stop this, Sandry._

She listens to the shadows of pain and exhaustion rippling across her mind, and she answers.

_No. You're mine._

"I will never let you go."

- : -

_"It's dark." There was a shudder in Sandry's voice. "Don't leave me in the dark, please! I'll be good - "_

_"Saati," Daja croaked, tears rolling down her cheeks, "please don't talk like that."_

**- Sandry's Book, Chapter 12**

- : -

"Have you thought about what I suggested?" Lark asks across a cup of Aliput's finest tea.

"Taking a break?" she answers, smiling slightly. "I can't, Lark. It's far too busy."

She sips her tea and she marvels at the countless new lines creasing the edges of Lark's lips and bracketing her eyes since the funeral. Lark is as willowy and graceful as ever, understanding warmth given long-limbed shape, but there is a fine tremor in her bronzed hand when she lifts the teacup to her lips, gray streaks prominent across her silky curls. In the last two months, Lark looks like she has aged two decades.

Lark is old, Sandry realizes again, and mortal, which she has understood for two months.

"I'm not the only one who looks like she needs a break," Sandry adds.

_Lark worries for you, Saati._

_I'm doing all right._

"I will have one," decides Dedicate Lark. "Unlike you. You are a wonderful duchess, Sandry, but you're burning yourself out." She lays a worn hand across Sandry's wrist. "You're running on magic now, but this can't keep going. I didn't teach you to let it go to keeping late hours."

"That magic's going to a very different project," Sandry insists. "I'm fine."

Lark is unconvinced by her claim, but she merely says, "You are not fine."

_If you were all right, you would not need to do what you do to your prisoners. You would not kill them._

_I was careless, all right? It won't happen again._

Sandry waves her hand hopelessly, unsure just who she is answering with her unclear gesture. "There are still so many monsters left over from the pirate attack who were never found. I know Winding Circle's doing its best to help us find them, but I don't want to know what they're doing in the meantime."

"Picking off any poor person who has a seed of magic, and taking them," Lark says grimly. She sets her tea down, fingers quivering in anger this time. "Pirates... I don't want to know what sort of person would shatter a mind for its own purposes, for its own gain. He or she is worse beyond compare than the monsters we deal with now."

It is Winding Circle's belief that the recent disappearances from Summersea are due to the... the... creatures cursed with an overload of power and no control that the pirates used to soften Summersea for an attack. Grotesque to the sight, if only because even those without usable magic can sense the utter wrongness to them, the monsters walk within the nightmares of Summersea's populace - they blend in with the shadows and fall ruthlessly onto any who make themselves easy pickings.

_Strange, isn't it? The majority of your people have never even seen the monsters, so when they dream of being taken they call the abductor the monster, and it is their greatest nightmare._

"I'm doing everything in my power to find the people who walk off by themselves," Sandry promises, only aware after she's spoken that she was saying it to Daja, and not to Lark. It takes a very difficult few heartbeats to focus enough on her teacher to continue. "It's just hard..."

The shadow of three mages not two months dead lies like a gulf between them, to join the ghosts Sandry sees in the corner of her eye, the three voices she hears because their bond is so strong even death cannot break it.

It's never silent any longer in Sandrilene fa Toren's head, and getting ever more crowded now that three other minds occupy it.

_So let us go,_ Daja's cool voice whispers, from somewhere beyond the abyss, the only sensation in the dull black that surrounds Sandry now.

_No. I won't be alone in the dark._

"You know we will find the monsters," Lark assures her.

Sandry half-smiles, half-grins. She is far too old to believe that Winding Circle can do anything they want. "I know you'll try."

- : -

_"This is stupid!" Briar snapped. "We're supposed to have magic, and look at us! I don't know anything that can help. What use to be a mage if that happens?"_

**- Sandry's Book, Chapter 12**

- : -

The people in the dungeons make no noise.

This pleases her, despite the nervous eyes of her guards, their muscles tensing in tiny spasms at the frigid silence that falls when she walks past. The dungeon is eerie and cold, a thousand shadows shifting over worn gray stones, iron bars and relentless eyes like the dancing of the flames responsible. It is hostile, it is unnatural, and it suits her just fine.

"This is the next cell, your Grace."

An old key pressed into heavy locks, a touch of a counter-spell spilling from her fingers, and iron doors swing inward in a smooth arc. To counter the difficulty of sight, the lengths of ribbon wrapped around her wrists and braided into her hair flare into eye-smarting white lightning, walls - and the occupants huddled at the back - bleached of color by the glare. It's almost like daylight.

Fear, she sees, and she frowns, oddly displeased.

She almost leaves there and then, but caution stays her step, whispers in her ear to look them over more closely. Daja and Tris were always cautious, and Briar had memories of shackles around his wrists and ankles and blood streaked across the canvas of his bronzed chest.

Perhaps she will find equal treasures among these.

The first three boys are not yet adolescents, and her claws around those thin young arms discourage rebellion when she stares into their eyes.

Magic, but not what she searches for. No light. No life.

No relief.

The fourth is sixteen or seventeen, perhaps, and more aware of the whispers from adjacent cells. When she gets a good grip on his jaw, nails digging into the skin of his cheeks, he tries to turn away, refusing to meet her eyes.

_(There are stories about those eyes. When the boy was young enough to curl on his mother's lap, evenings would be filled by tales of those eyes dazzling suitors from far and wide, teasing without promising. "We're lucky she rules," his mother used to say, and he wonders what his mother would think were she still alive now.)_

It's a mistake to resist.

"Hold him down," she orders, and strong arms pin his limbs until he is helpless to keep her from searching for echoes of the past.

Maybe, she thinks, just maybe.

His appearance - dark curls and golden skin, his way of clawing at the guards' exposed skin like a street urchin brawling - unnerve her enough to make her careless, make her see what isn't there. With a surge of tentative hope rising in her chest, her grip on his chin loosens, disappears entirely. It takes her mere moments to reach into a sealed fold of her dress and bring out her sharp knife; as he notices the white glare streaking forwards, before he reacts, she has drawn blood from the center of his palm.

"If I'm who you think you are," she murmurs, meeting his jade-eyed panic with the cold serenity of her gaze, "this won't hurt."

He struggles in earnest now, thrashing, fighting, but they are trained and he is not. Breathless and unheeding of danger - how could it get worse? - he gasps out, "You're insane."

"I'm searching," Sandry corrects, almost gently, and she reaches out with her mind to tug at his magic.

It is a risk. A well-trained mage would be able to resist, but she has four lifetimes of knowledge in her head, and he's really just a boy.

Unless he's...

Unless he's...

His voice rises to a blood-curling crescendo.

...screaming thrashing jerking shouting yelling screaming screaming screaming...

_Stop it, Sandry! You're killing him! Poor fella's going to - I'll stop you -_

_But you can't. Not unless this works._

...keening crying begging pleading Mama please don't...

...and somewhere out there he stabs a man and leaves him bleeding, crowing in triumph, money in his hands and thoughts of food in his belly, and he's going to be full tonight, no one will stop him, he won't let them stop him...

...flesh parting with difficulty beneath the knife of his old blade, pushing, pushing, shoving, man is screaming but he doesn't care, shoving past tissue and scraping against cartilage of ribs, chest opened up like you would slice open a ripe fruit to spill its blood-red contents, is the steady thrumming moving through his knife from the beating of the man's half-exposed heart? and he doesn't care because he will be full tonight this is nothing but survival...

...he/she will survive must must must survive won't stay in the dark/be alone/bow to anyone because this is what he/she wants he/she will have what she wants and she wants them back now so this mind will become hers her thoughts only and they will come back here...

... and somewhere under a colorless sky a man with bronzed skin and jade eyes looks at her from across the other side of the boy's mind, and she laughs in triumph until the Trader with dark skin and scholar with copper curls appear. _you've failed. not us. never will be us. you've failed. not coming back. left you. goodbye. stop. now_...

The boy's high, keening screaming-begging-pleading cuts off and leaves almost audible gauges in its wake from where it tore through the air.

The silence rings - silence where you would expect panting, but everyone is staring at her, too afraid to breathe, and she is completely unaffected.

"Cat dirt," Sandry says, removing her hand from the boy's forehead and wiping it on her skirts, making a note to clean it later. She stands, regal and calm as ever, smoothing her hair, disappointed despite herself. She's supposed to be used to it by now, but she was careless this time, did more than the fragile mind could handle. She couldn't stop herself from hoping that maybe this one, this next one would save her.

They haven't, so far.

"What will we do with the... body..." one of her guards rustles up the courage to say as it becomes clear the action is over; he trails off at her frown. He's as unnerved as the three boys who have pressed back against the wall, eyes wide and staring.

"Burn it," she tells him shortly, annoyed at restating facts again and again. "Make sure there's nothing left." She takes note of his face (and she used to be so good at keeping track of who was who until recently) and rank, and turns to leave. She adds, matter-of-fact, "If anyone asks, he was attacked by one of those monsters and we weren't in time to save him."

The whispers start up once she's gone.

_("We're lucky she rules," his mother used to say._

_And now?_

_His neighbors in adjacent cells laugh at the story.)_

- : -

_Scornfully, Daja held out her palm. Tris sighed, and handed the crystal over. Some of the breaks and threads now sparkled._

_"For Sandry," Briar explained._

_"So she'll always have a light," added Tris._

_"You'd better let me help," Daja said._

**- Sandry's Book, Chapter 13**

- : -

Three months and a dozen bodies later, her patience runs out along with the magic of her crystal - her last memento of her family that still hums with power.

"Donkey dung," she sighs, and tells them to get rid of the body and bring in the next one.

_We're dead._

_If you were dead and gone, I would be too. We're too connected._

"The next one, please."

_You need to see a mind-healer, Sandry. Get rid of these shards in your mind. Can't you see what they're doing to you?_

"The next one, please."

_Nothing good comes from obsession with the past, Sandry. It's long past time that you let go._

She pauses, suddenly angry.

_You left me. You all left me! All the voices - talking - bright - and you left me in the dark again! I can't... I won't... you can't make me stay there by myself. Don't you think I would let go of the past if I could? Make the shadow leave me?_

_Holding onto us is fracturing your mind -_

_But I can't, and I won't give up the light again, Tris. I won't let the crystal fade away. I would let my mind fracture to bring you back, all of you. I would do anything to leave the dark._

_No Sandry, don't!_

The little girl's mind, Sandry decides, feels like flower petals crushed in her fist.

- : -

_"Crystals can be spelled and hold power or a long time," Tris explained. "We figure—"_

_"We hope," Daja corrected._

_"We hope that by the time the power leaves the crystal, you won't be afraid of the dark anymore," Briar explained._

_Sandry's eyes filled and spilled over. "Thank you," she said. "I couldn't ask for better friends."_

**- Sandry's Book, Chapter 13**

- : -

On her better days, Sandrilene fa Toren stops listening.

She locks herself into her rooms and burrows as deep into the dark as possible, where prisoners are far out of her reach and the voices in her head will stop fighting.

You're mine. "I will never let you go."

_How long're you gonna keep this up, Duchess?_ Briar asks, shackles around his wrists and ankles and blood streaked across the canvas of his bronzed chest _(shoving past tissue and scraping against cartilage of ribs)_ like he's back in the war-torn east.

...Fears and night terrors, dreams-turned-to-truth, facts that have been written across the stars and twisted into an impossible future that will one day come to pass. Darkness on both sides, no light, no friends, and she will be alone when she falls...

Laughter and smiles, fingers of magic and a heart of love aren't enough when four becomes one. She will survive, must, must, must survive -

_I would do anything,_ she announces, hands clasped with Tris and Daja, if just for a moment, because they mean the world to her and she would let the world burn_. I would let my mind fracture to bring you back, all of you._

_I don't want to know what sort of person would shatter a mind for its own purposes, for its own gain,_ Lark whispers, eyes dark and blind to what must be done. _He or she is worse beyond compare than the monsters we deal with now._

Lark stops, and Sandry notices that she's lying flat across the ground, mouth frozen in a silent scream, and Sandry is standing over her, hand on her forehead and thinking, _Maybe this one._

_Strange, isn't it? _Daja asks, arms and legs tangled in a metal grating of pale magic until she can barely move._ The majority of your people have never even seen the monsters, so they dream of being taken and call the abductor 'Monster', and it is their greatest nightmare._

In her room, Sandry's fingers curl around her skirts, fighting, and she remembers how the girl's fingers felt.

Shadows flicker, congealing around her ankles, calves, slithering past her knees and elbows until it feels like she's doing to drown in that pool of darkness.

...And when they saw the shadows, and they refused to simply stay, but gave her of their own laughter and smiles, and she spun the magic into ropes that coiled along her wrists and dragged her away from the shadows into the safety of the sun...

_No Sandry, don't!_ cries Tris, a rope of light, blinding in its intensity, extending from her to the ribbons around Sandry's arms, a bridge binding the two together - but this time Sandry pulls them down with her into the shadows locked around her ankles. Briar and his chains, Daja and her grating, Tris and her ropes - down, down, down.

In the shadows, Duchess Sandrilene fa Toren half-smiles, half-grins.

Once upon a time there was a little slip of a girl with magic in her fingers and love in her heart, who lived on the edges of a temple-city where tales could be true or they could be real, but they weren't always both.

There came a time when a new story meandered from the city to the temple on its outskirts, spread mouth to mouth.

And it told of how a monster attacked Summersea and stole away countless beings in the dead of night, the midst of darkness.

_(All the better to hear you with.)_

- : -

**Well?**


End file.
